Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois is fighting a private and public war against banking institutions for establishing high monthly debit and checking fees, specifically against Bank of America.

What he would like people to know is that free checking is actually expensive checking, and that the fees involved with receiving them are often tucked away somewhere else where it’s harder to catch them. The question is also potentially philosophical in nature, as an analyst from the Aite Group, Ron Shelvin postulates that it can be argued that free checking will always exist just as easily as that it never actually existed in the first place.

Why the confusion?

Free checking is a service and if we assume that no company or institution, which includes banks, can afford to offer its customers a purely free service we understand that the funds must originate somewhere in order to provide something. For example, in the past free checking was achieved by hidden fees, such as overdraft fees. While it’s true that overdraft protection is in-and-of-itself a service, overdraft fees are high (and occur relatively frequently) enough to compensate for free checking. Customers are also feed for using A.T.M.’s belonging to other banks. Another source of funds that purportedly covers free checking is overpriced debit cards fees, which either together or separately allows for it.

Durbin wanted legislation to be passed that would restrict high checking fees. When Bank of America enforced a $5 monthly debit card fee, he suggested that people should leave that bank.

And other financial players are trying to capitalize on some banks’ high checking fees, such as a company called PerkStreet, which returns customers up to 2 percent for making purchases with their proprietary debit cards.

And another company, BancVue, offers checking that can bring a return an interest rate higher than 3 percent for regular card users. The company claims that the total amount of branches that offer the BancVue return will equal the revenue generated by the 10th-largest bank in America.

And so Senator Durbin’s point of contention, and his legislative push, is that banks with more than $10 billion in assets will not be legally permitted to both charge the high monthly fee and impose a collection fee on debit cards. If passed, his legislation will exclude institutions with lower assets, because the revenue generated by their fees are invested in creating better checking account opportunities.